High-End Audio Gear Is Caviar for Your Ears

Ayon Audio CD5s

Ayon Audio is mostly known for its amplifiers, so it's not surprising to see the company has incorporated a tube-based preamp into this CD player. There are inputs for external analog sources, so you can plug in anything and use just the digital-to-analog converter or the preamp inside. But of course, it's made to play CDs, and at that, it excels — to the tune of $11,380.

Devialet D-Premier Amplifier

The striking design of the Devialet D-Premier amp inspired the demo crew at the California Audio Show to mount it on the wall at the head of the room, like an objet d'art. It sounds as nice as it looks. Inside are two amps running in parallel — a Class A analog stage and a Class D digital stage, providing a total of 240 watts per channel. The minimalist design is matched by the groovy remote, a shiny metal box with a big, shiny metal knob protruding from the top. The whole package is $16,500.

Wilson Audio MAXX 3

It looks like a Dalek from Doctor Who, but the only thing it wants to exterminate is your pair of crappy white earbuds. The MAXX 3 is the latest iteration of the classic speaker design from Wilson Audio, a company revered for making exceptionally clear-sounding cabinets. The units in this room sounded beautiful pumping out some vintage Bowie, even if they looked a little menacing lurking between the potted palms. If the looks don't frighten you, the price will — they're $68,000 a pair.

QPods From Magico

These squat little numbers are QPods, vibration-control devices from the speaker company Magico. By installing these feet under your audio components, you can reduce any vibrations and rumbles that may rattle your components and adversely affect the sound. Each pod is crafted mostly from CNC-milled stainless steel and aluminum, but there's also a layer of copper sandwiched inside. $1,310 gets you a set of three QPods, which is enough to isolate a single amp or preamp. A four-pack runs $1,680.

TransRotor Orfeo

This was the most badass vinyl rig we saw at the show — a TransRotor Orfeo turntable ($17,000) with a Graham Phantom 9-inch tonearm ($6,000) and an Air Tight PC-1 moving-coil cartridge ($6000). Perfect for those Ramones records from the dollar bin at Thrift Town!

Mbl 101 MK II

Walking into the demo room for German hi-fi manufacturer Mbl was like strolling onto the set of a Kubrick film. The impressive $260,000 setup was dominated by a pair Mbl 101 MK II Radialstrahler reference speakers. You may confuse the white-and-gold machines for scientific probes, since they lack the cone-shaped drivers found on traditional speakers.

The Radialstrahlers are omnidirectional — radial speakers that push out 360-degree sound waves, filling the whole room at once. They sound absolutely amazing: the best speakers we heard the entire weekend. The first thing we listened to was a track from The Bad Plus cranked to match the volume of a live performance. When the song ended, several people in the room started applauding, myself included.

Sony SS-AR1

One of the best-sounding speakers we heard at the show didn't come from some obscure manufacturer you've never heard of, it came from audio giant Sony. The SS-AR1 is a marvel of workmanship. The baffle is crafted from Hokkaido maple that's harvested only during the month of November, when the wood is at its densest. The rest of the box is hand-built from Finnish birch. Add custom drivers from ScanSpeak and seven layers of varnish, and you end up with a gorgeous package for your hard-earned $27,000.

The set we heard was hooked up to a system from Pass Labs. The transparency was remarkable — one listener in the room with us got a huge grin on his face and said, "They just disappeared!"

Audioengine A5N

Audiophile gear isn't all esoteric materials and five-figure price tags. We especially liked these powered bookshelf speakers from Audioengine. The $450 speakers feature 5-inch Kevlar woofers and 20-mm silk tweeters encased in inch-thick bamboo. Even with an iPhone over AirPort Express as a source, they sounded great, especially given the small size of the cabinets. Audioengine co-founder Brady Bargenquast also showed us a newer version of these he's working on with an iPhone dock built in.

Luxman PD-171

Philip O'Hanlon puts a disc on the Luxman PD-171 turntable in the showroom for his southern California distribution company, On a Higher Note. Flanking the $6,000 turntable — the first turntable Luxman has produced since 1983 — are a pair of Vivid B1 speakers ($13,500 a pair). On the floor is a Sonorus ATR 10 reel-to-reel tape deck. The $10,000 tape machine has an integrated tube stage and is fitted for playback only.

D'Agostino Momentum

Dan D'Agostino has been making amps for 32 years, mostly at Krell Industries, where he's a co-founder. Having spent that much time in the high-end audio business, he's seen his share of amps that sound great, but are beastly-looking.

So this year, he debuted his newest design, the Momentum, a 300-watt monoblock amplifier dignified by beautiful copper heat-sink side plates and a glowing analog VU meter on the face. "I wanted to make something people could put in their listening room and say, 'Wow, that looks really nice,'" he says.

D'Agostino's hand-wired, all-analog monoblocks sell for $45,000 a pair. He says he's also working on a stereo amp, a preamp, and a phono stage to match.

Von Gaylord Uni Sea

You've seen a liquid-cooled PC — here's a liquid-cooled amp. Von Gaylord's Uni Sea is a four-piece Class A amplifier, and the two monoblocks are each topped with fluid-filled acrylic cylinders that regulate the temperature of the transmitting tubes. At 200 watts per channel, it's powerful, but it ain't cheap. The price tag is $100,000.

Audio Space Reference 3.1 300B

This component with the steampunk-inspired good looks is the Chinese-made Audio Space Reference 3.1, a 21-watt-per-channel integrated amp with a built-in tube phono stage. Those unusual, bulb-shaped things sticking out the top are a set of four custom-made 300B output tubes. The amp costs $4,290, but Audio Space also makes a less-expensive version that uses KT-88 tubes.

BURLINGAME, California — Upon arriving at the California Audio Show, we spent a few minutes ogling the Ferraris and Maseratis in the parking lot.

Little did we know that once we walked inside, we'd see stereo systems twice the price of one of those fancy sports cars.

The CAS — far removed from the massive, mainstream industry trade shows — is organized by Constantine Soo, publisher of the high-end audio site Dagogo.com. This is Soo's second year running the show, which is the largest on the West Coast, boasting around 3,000 attendees over a weekend in mid-July.

On display were hand-built monoblock tube amps, omnidirectional speakers, gas plasma drivers, 6-foot-tall subwoofers and laser-guided turntables — objects made for people with the ears, the mindset and the trust fund to appreciate such things. You could trade reel-to-reel tapes with other collectors, or join the debate in the hallway about which test tone is most appropriate for calibrating your digital transport.

Soo is quick to stress that almost everything at the show is for two-channel stereo playback, not for watching movies in surround sound.

"Home theater stuff is for everyone in the family," he says. "This stuff is for the fanatics and the audiophiles who have a dedicated room in their house just for music listening."

Above:

Einstein Audio "The Tube" Preamp

A quality preamp is a necessity for bringing out the dynamics in a recording, and you'd be hard pressed to find a component better — or better-looking — than Einstein's "The Tube." This $18,400 unit from the German company uses 19 vacuum tubes to discretely power as many as five audio sources.

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